Chapter Twenty-Five: Principle of Sufficient Reason
AN: Thanks to my beta, Greeneyedconstellations for all her help and support throughout this piece. She's an absolute inspiration, and I honestly couldn't have done it without her.
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The principle of sufficient reason states that everything must have a reason or a cause.
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Emily toed her shoes off, sitting on the end of the bed with the over-long sleeves of Rossi's sweater hiding her hands folded in her lap. She looked tired, worn, and blissfully happy.
"It's one a.m.," she said, her voice thick with alcohol, and arched her neck back to peer at him standing by the door, using the frame to hold himself upright. "It's Christmas. Merry Christmas. And we're old, so old, oh my god when did this happen? Argh, my legs are killing me."
Reid nudged the door shut, walking slowly to the bed with every step carefully placed, dropped to his knees in front of her, shuffling forwards. There was flour on the sweater, the scent of perfume and cooking, a red flush that splashed down her throat and vanished under the wide neck to the skin below.
He was silent as he ran his hand up her calf, feeling the tension in the muscles, kneading that tension away. He was silent as she shucked the sweater, giggling as it tangled in her hair that had, for once, actually become something that was almost unmanaged. He was silent as he pressed his lips to her bare knee, fingers still working the muscle, but laughed when she reached down to smooth the white dress that was every bit as gorgeous as his drunken mind had envisioned.
"Come here, you," she said, and tugged him up onto the bed, landing on her with an oomph. "Gah. God. You're so awkward. And overdressed."
"You're overdressed," he countered pertly, and rapped his fingers on her belly. She ignored his jibe, instead yanking his shirt over his head and leaving it midway off, arms pinned to his side, yelping at his sudden impairment. Before he could wriggle his way out of the shirt, she'd rolled him onto his back, straddling him with the dress hiked up to her waist, grinning down at him with an expression he just knew she'd learned from Sergio.
The shirt went flying and he stared up at her, blinking fuzzily, trying to work out when she'd gotten the upper hand and how come he, a demon, was being beaten by a human. A drunk human. A drunk gorgeous human.
Then he looked down his torso. At the bare legs pinning him to the bed, the folds of the white dress, and the bunched up shape of the under-slip she was wearing. And what was under the under-slip.
Very abruptly, everything in him was paying very close attention to what was under the under-slip. Which was to say, not much.
Arched eyebrows arched higher. "Merry Christmas to you too," she murmured, and rolled her hips down along him. He whimpered. Then laughed, as her hands danced up his bare chest, bucking against her as he gasped and tried to squirm free.
"Stop, ah, stop," he wheezed, and the bed groaned under them. "People—ah! —are going to think we're, ah!"
"Having sex?" she teased, and slid forward, catlike, across his torso, cupping his jaw with her hands and pulling their mouths together into a kiss that started off laughing and slowly deepened with their breathing, lingering and lingering until he was dizzy with want and giddy with love. "Well, wouldn't want to disappoint them, would we? And you were so keen to get me out of this dress at dinner…"
"The sweater," he protested, as she slowly straightened, looming over him. "I wanted you out of the sweater. To see the dress."
Up went the eyebrow again. "And do you like it, then?"
"Yes," he said softly, staring at her dark dark eyes and the wave of hair over her flushed face. "Very much." The moment was shifting. The giddiness trailed away. Emily's gaze lowered, almost shy, as she arched her spine to reach behind her back to tug the zip down. He lifted his hand, running it down the bump of her back and helping, slowly, so slowly. Like unwrapping a gift. The dress slipped lower, the soft shhshhhh of fabric over skin; revealing shoulders, the bump of her collarbone, where the flush from her neck crept down her chest and between her breasts, her navel. He trailed his fingers with the dress as it pooled around her splayed legs, a warm weight across him.
"Still enjoying the view?" she asked again, mouth quirking. The words were heavy in the hush.
"Yes," he repeated, still looking at her eyes. Swallowed, mouth dry and voice rough. Her lips parted, invitingly, and he ached. "Come here. Please." She obeyed, lowering herself in a smooth movement, and he braced a hand against her back and found his mouth with hers, hungry. Put the other hand to their side, and rolled her onto it slowly, until they were side-by-side and he could use his free hand to pull the dress down her legs, using his foot to gently ease it off of her. Still kissing, still breathing each other in, doing nothing but letting their lips meet and press and easing off, inhaling in unison. Long, slow breaths.
Her hands slipped between them, working on his belt buckle and pants, and he lifted his hip from the bed to assist. Socks followed, until they were bare and curled against each other, the cool air nipping at their skin and leaving it rippled, making every point of contact between them searing in comparison. She wrapped a leg over his thigh, pulling him tighter towards her. He was hard between her legs and gasping slightly as she rubbed against him.
He swept his hands over her body, feeling her shiver against him at the counterpoint of hot and cold. Tore himself away from her mouth with difficulty and worked slowly down her jaw, her throat, finding the lobe of her ear and mouthing at it, using his tongue to draw it into his mouth, gently against his teeth, blowing a warm breath against it and making her whimper and coil.
"Spence," she gasped, almost moaned, and the sound went straight down in a hot rush from his spine to his dick. He twitched and stiffened between her legs, rocking his hips up into the wet enticement of her; his turn to rub against her with a soft groan of want. Slow and heady and wild with everything, he pulled away to study her eyes, the glaze to them and the red on her cheeks and the way her hands curled and uncurled with the sway of their bodies.
He shivered, adjusting his position. Used his hands to ease her leg up, position himself to nudge against her, an assurance. Swayed his hips to tease, almost in but not quite, splayed a wide palm on her pelvic bone and used it to rock her in his own rhythm.
She was silent, breathing turning ragged, waiting for his move. "This," she said finally, and there was none of the savage, greedy need in her voice they were usually torn by at this point. "This is why I can't take Clyde's offer. I need this, Spence. Need you."
"I'll go with you," he replied calmly, and closed his eyes as he tensed and pushed forward, just a little. Easing in. Slowly. So slowly. Her turn to whimper, a noise that turned into a sigh, eyelids shuttering closed and head reclining back. He moved a hand up, cupped the back of her head, and found her lips, her cheek, the corner of her eye with his own lips. The lines of her mouth that he'd put there, the ones of stress and laughter and love, he kissed them all. "London, here. I don't care. We can start again anywhere. They'll never lose contact with us, no matter how far we go."
"Spence, love," she whispered, fidgeting to try and coax him in deeper. He obliged, a little, starting up a slow, shallow rhythm with his hips that teased more than it eased.
He kept going, ruthless. "I can work anywhere," he said, closing his eyes for a moment as his voice skipped and he slipped in further. "Maybe even at the group home where Declan is. I know your rune. I know what they've been through. We'll start our lives." Another thrust, deeper again. She breathed with him as he pushed in and in and in, only breathing out when he slipped away again. "Start a home." Again. Longer. As deep as he could, and resting within her. Lowered his voice, deepened it, husky with love and arousal and something weightier. "Start a family."
Emily hissed, pressing a breath out between her teeth, her chest heaving. It sounded like the kind of exhale that hurt, that tore on the way out, and her eyes were huge. "A family of two," she said, and tilted her head away.
"Yes," he promised, finding his cadence and sticking to it, never easing or missing a beat, steady as a summer storm beating against glass. "Or three. We have options. So many." Found her lips again, just resting his against them and whispering the next words into them. "Anything you want. Everything you want. Just… tell me. Please."
She quickened against him, moving faster and randomly, coming apart in his arms at his enticement. He hugged her close and let her fall, ready to catch her. Ready to put her back together again. Over and over, as many times as it took. "Yes, yes," she breathed, and he slipped a palm between them, right where she could rock against it for the friction she needed. "Oh oh. Yes. God, shit, Spence. I want that. All of that. This job. This change."
"You can have it." His thoughts were scattering in slow motion, the climax glacial in its build-up but overwhelming nonetheless. It took his words, all his pretty words and his clever, clever brain, and ground them both to a halt and left him breathless against her. His throat and chest tightened in unison as she rippled and squeezed around him, coming slowly and irrevocably, with as little fanfare as she ever had, just stiffening, sighing once deep in her chest, and slowly relaxing. It was anticlimactic, gorgeous, and he exhaled her name against her sweaty skin and followed her.
And he found his words, his voice, again as he followed, rambling, gasping her name and countless other meaningless twists of language, choked against her skin and her mouth and her body, his fingers twined through hers. It rolled through him, fizzing everywhere they touched, and by the time it was done he felt spent, wrung out, wired, and hopelessly in love with the woman trailing her hands over his body.
"I don't know how to vocalize how I feel about you," he managed, when it had receded enough that he could string a sentence together again, still inside her, still sticky, still shaking along with his heartbeat.
"You don't need to," she said after a long beat, and brushed her nose against his, eyes closed. Their minds touched, melded, clicked together. "It's all in here. I know. I know it all."
It was, and she did. He closed his eyes, hugged her closer, and let the night slip onwards and bring with it the coming dawn as her heartbeat returned to normal and her mind fell into sleep, breathing evening out.
He waited until she slept deeply, ignoring his own fatigue, and he planned.
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He'd been relatively sure that JJ—the only one who hadn't drunk heavily the night before—would hear the gentle brush of his knuckles against the door, really not keen on slipping into a room where two elves slept with their child. That was a one-way trip to getting thrown through a wall, and even demon bones didn't take well to being snap-frozen.
Luckily, he'd been right.
Christmas morning was white with frost. No snow this year, but the world around them glimmered blue in the dawning light. It was a clean, fresh morning, and Reid felt alive and sure of himself for the first time in months.
JJ was quiet, her hands steady on the steering wheel. "Are you going to tell me why we're doing this?" she asked finally, pulling the car smoothly up the gravel drive of the cemetery. Around them, the graves were silent, still, all covered in an identical layer of ice that hid the careful inscriptions of love and grief.
"She's going to take the job," Reid replied, still a little drunk, mostly really tired, and his eyes fell automatically onto the sloping hill where Sergio's tree grew resolutely.
JJ swallowed. The car idled and turned off, the hood steaming in the cold air. She turned, reaching into the back, throwing gloves and a heavy coat that he'd shed under the heater at him. "I know," she said. "Put your coat on. It's freezing." She didn't bother. The cold was nothing to her. "But why are we here?"
Awkwardly, he pulled the coat on over his flannel pyjamas, boots weirdly heavy over the top of the toothbrush bedecked pants. Between his legs, there was a pot of soil he'd nabbed from Rossi's garden shed, runed for hardiness and protection against winter. Whatever was transplanted there would live, despite the adverse conditions of an early Christmas morning transference.
"I'm making sure she knows that if she goes," he began, picking up the pot and trailing his fingers over it, "that her family goes with her. Always."
"Spence?" JJ asked, following to the tree. Reid blinked. Around Sergio's tree, the grass was green. The bark was a glossy brown, the leaves gone but the tree bursting with vitality anyway. Winter had come to it, as it had everywhere, but it hadn't drained it as it had the others. When he brushed his hand against a branch to find a likely cutting, he felt JJ's touch thrumming through the bark, radiating from the plaque on the trunk. "You know that no matter what you do, we all support you, right? If this is what you guys need to do, we're with you one hundred percent."
"Thanks, JJ," he said, and found the perfect branch. Merry Christmas, Sergio. We miss you.
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He woke her up with a kiss that simmered and a murmured Merry Christmas, love. She was asleep until she wasn't, slack against his mouth until she sighed into his lips and returned the heat, curving against his body.
"Merry Christmas," she replied sleepily, opening her eyes and blinking when she saw what was between them. "What is this?"
Reid pressed the pot against her hands, watching her trace her fingers over the terracotta, eyes locked on the thin, fragile looking cutting within. He knew that when she finally trailed a finger over the apparently weak looking twigs branching away, she'd feel the life that spiralled through it, the familiar throb of a beloved personality that lingered still in the heart of the tree.
"It's a promise," he whispered, and kissed her again. "Everything we've done so far has led to this moment, Em. Everything we've suffered. And now, whatever we do, we do it together."
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Everything moved very quickly after that. Life, as Reid was discovering, had a habit of doing that right when they needed time to organize their affairs. And there was a lot to organize. Putting the house back on the market—and the realtor really hadn't enjoyed that visit—Emily flying back and forth from London organizing her transition into the Interpol office whenever she had a spare moment from the BAU, Reid wading through enough paperwork to even overwhelm him.
"I'm off," Emily said, sailing through in a fluster of bags and coats, sweeping her fingers through his hair and leaning down to catch his mouth with hers. "I fly back stupidly early Sunday. What's this?"
"Do you know for a demon to migrate we need ten non-blood related personal references?" Reid groused, letting his head loll back against her front. Nearby, another postcard mocked him. Blank but for the Greetings from Dubai scrawled across the front in tacky clip art. Reid eyed it warily, not willing to wonder what Romain was doing back in the ME. He stared at it as he kept complaining, "Two of which have to be from the UK? I don't know anyone from the UK. It's easier to get a familial visa than it is a partner visa, by the way. I only need five references for that."
"Leave it with me," she said with a smile, kissing him again and bolting out the door. "Don't miss me too much!"
And she was gone. He sighed and pressed his pen back to the paper.
This better be worth it, he thought with a grumble, but the excitement still thrummed through him. Magical abilities… he swallowed and trailed the pen overtop of the dotted line, uncertain. Whatever he wrote, they'd test him for it in customs. He'd spent the last five months avoiding any kind of questioning about his null magic, avoiding Emily's quiet concern and Rossi's loud curiosity. Avoiding the piling job prospects in his inbox, all of which involved some level of magicka ability. Avoiding the clawing hollow feeling that he was missing something.
I'll go Monday, he thought tiredly, letting his eyes shutter shut. I'll get it tested Monday. Confirmed. Whatever.
May as well face all of his fears now.
But when Sunday came, it brought with it Emily's phone beeping in the early hours of the morning, startling her out of a jetlagged sleep. It brought with it a frantic call from JJ asking him to look after Henry while she and Will both worked.
It brought with it the Face Cards and Reid walking into the kitchen to find a woman standing near Henry. The woman turned. Reid blinked, his ears still ringing with the reports of explosion FBI Emily where is Emily and the silence of his phone, and the woman raised a gun and stepped towards his godson.
"Don't move, demon," she said, and turned the gun towards Henry. Henry peered at it from his high chair, face scrunching with concern. She touched him. A gentle caress of his hand. "Me and the bucko are just going to go for a quick walk."
She touched him.
Reid noted several things in short succession.
Ghoul, he thought with a shiver, scenting the air. Faster than I am.
She's past the security runes. Which means JJ or Will had to have let her past them.
The final thing, the most satisfying, followed from the first.
She's not faster than lightning.
The light overhead hummed, whistled, and blew with a crack that Henry screamed along with, and the tiles between Henry and the woman split and shattered as the lightning crashed down between them. Heat and power snapped in the air and lashed out towards the woman, curving protectively around the boy. Reid lunged. Not for Henry.
He hit the woman, they went down, and he pressed his hand against her throat, wings flared and lightning glittering over his skin like the promise of death.
"Ghouls burn nicely," he purred, baring his fangs and leaning closer to her throat. An empty threat, they weren't designed for that use, but some demons' teeth were and she didn't know what he was. She froze. "Touch my godson again and I'll cremate you."
JJ arrived seconds later, Rossi at her side. Rossi kept back, eyes wide, and JJ brought with her winter. She didn't say anything to the woman, just went straight to Henry as Rossi cuffed her roughly and dragged her upright, his face cold.
"Emily?" Reid asked, when JJ stopped looking quite so brittle. JJ shuddered.
"They've got Will," she said finally, and bit back whatever fear was pushing to slip out of her mouth. "They've got, Will, Spence. Emily's going after them, but…"
He could go after them. Reach for Emily's magic again and fly to her, fly to Will. But he had to trust her with this.
"It's okay," he soothed, and stayed with JJ. Emily had trusted him to walk alone into the slaver's den. It was his turn now. "It will all be okay."
And it was, in the end.
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JJ and Will were married that night, by decree of David Rossi who was "damn well over watching people getting tugged apart."
The ceremony was stunning, the speeches were gorgeous, and when the time came for their family to dance together with the newly married LaMontangnes, Reid knew this would be the last dance for a very long time. He wrapped his arms around Emily, and let her guide him easily around the floor, weaving through the familiar forms of their family, eyes seeing everything and nothing all at once. Emily didn't falter, didn't miss a beat, ever sure of her future now it had been decided.
"You know you're supposed to lead, right Pretty Boy?" Morgan teased, and Reid ducked his head down sheepishly as Emily laughed.
"I go where she leads," he murmured, and Emily shivered and looked up at him.
"You shouldn't do that," she scolded, using her elbow to jab Rossi as they passed and still managing to look supremely innocent when he yelped and turned to look at her. "Don't put yourself behind me. Walk your own path, Spence."
He quirked his eyebrow as the song ended, stepping apart. "Last time I did that, I got kidnapped," he said, and she barked a laugh. Outside the pavilion they danced under, a light rain swept across the grass, pattering on the roof and making the children shriek as they ducked out into it with no care for their outfits.
Emily tensed, glancing around. "Come on," she said, tugging his hand, and dragged him off the pavilion and into the dark of the garden, the drizzle dampening his hair to his head and trickling down his neck. "Shh. If Rossi sees this, he'll have a fit about his floors and we'll be sleeping outside."
"Where are we going?" he asked with interest, glancing back longingly at the white lights of the reception. He wanted this last night, these last memories. He wanted this to be the end of this tale, this fairy-tale moment. Something to obscure the nightmares that had preceded it.
"Close your eyes," Emily told him, and they were standing in the middle of the pitch black lawn, and the rain hummed around them. Her dress was wet, clinging, and he frowned. "Stop worrying. It's fine. Close them."
He did. She took his hand, rested her other on his hip, almost a dance without moving, body pressed close and heart hammering. "What are we doing?" he asked, feeling weird and damp and a little uncomfortable.
"Listening," she sent, and threaded her magic into him. He took it, reaching out into the night and the rain, feeling his body relax against hers as it welcomed the weather's touch, craving the storm that hid in every rain cloud's heart. "It's still there. Your magic."
"This is yours," he sent back after a slow moment, feeling content and distant as his magic curled through the rain around them, dragging it towards them. Rain fell harder, just in their little corner of the garden, eddying in a circle and drenching them both. "I'm just… leeching off of you."
She was silent for a long moment, then, "No, you're not. Spence. I took my magic back two minutes ago. This is you. The same as it was today, protecting Henry. It's all you."
His eyes snapped open. The rain slowed, released, shifting away. Someone shouted for them, cussing about the rain. Morgan.
"Oh," he said out loud, feeling deep within himself the spark that simmered slowly and died even as he reached for it. But there. The team appeared around them, shaking rain from their hair, JJ giggling as she hiked up her dress to avoid muddying the hem. Reid pushed the rain away, glorying when it obeyed, and the clouds broke just enough to see a hint of the stars. Blue light lit the lawn as seven palms lit with the FBI sigil, and no one really spoke because there was a silent realization that this was their goodbye. The moment Reid had wanted, but not quite how he'd pictured it.
It wasn't an ending after all.
It was really more of a beginning.
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He had intended upon surprising Declan the first week he was in London.
As it turned out, he wasn't even in London a week before he had to leave.
"Spence," Emily said suddenly, jogging up the stairs into their barely unpacked flat, something in her hand. "Who has our address?"
"The team," he answered absently, sorting through his books and only half-listening. "Uh. Clyde? No one else, yet. Why?"
She held it out. A roughly wrapped box. When he took it, something rattled inside. Reaching tentatively with his magic, there was something in it, something that sparked against his power in an almost familiar manner, but…
He opened it. A bell rolled within. Silver.
Romain.
"Is he okay?" Emily asked, her voice sharp, and Reid remembered the last postcard. Dubai. Two months before, and nothing since. His gut twisted and dropped into his shoes, taking with it all the air in the room. There was no note within. When it touched the bell with his skin, it dinged gently, and he became distantly aware of a direction. A pull.
He looked at Emily. She paled. "Not alone," she said, and he bit at his lip and tasted copper.
"Not alone," he agreed.
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The bell led them to a house tucked against a sheer mountain slope in Ukraine, battered and windswept and overgrown by sparse, scrubby weeds. Reid paused, feet careful on the rocky slope, and Emily tensed.
"Want me to go?" Clyde asked, skin rippling with the promise of fur. Reid hesitated. Slipping his hand into his pocket, the bell tugged at him, calling him. Yearning. Something in that unkempt little hovel needed him.
He didn't know what he was going to find in there. But it had to be him.
He owed his partner that much.
So he stepped forward, ignoring Emily's soft ah of worry. Another step. Scanning his surroundings for a glint of metal in the distance, a gun barrel, for the sweep of a demon rune in the loose ground.
There. Movement.
He turned his head slowly, and found himself eye to eye with a fierce gaze on a knurled and buckled tree to his right. Wide gold eyes on a round face, crowned with tufts of feathers; Reid relaxed. The owl was calm, feathers smooth. Small and striped and young enough that he could see the promise of down around its beak still; it was completely unafraid of the demon and his companions.
So Reid strode forward, unafraid as well, and called out gently before easing the door open. "Romain?" he asked, coughing in the dusty air, his eyes struggling to adjust to the gloom. "Hello?"
A scuffle. A gasp. He realized what he was looking at, and pulled back quickly, waving Emily over. "Go gently," he whispered, and eased the door open with a groan of abused wood so she could slip past, lightning the room with the deep ocean blue of the Interpol sigil.
It lit up the room. It lit up the two girls who stared at them, dressed warmly in coats there was no way they could afford, surrounded by the remains of food Reid knew they couldn't have supplied themselves with. There was no way two children, barely eight or nine, could have lugged that much canned produce up the mountain.
And it lit up the bell that one of the girls wore around her neck. Reid studied her as Emily made soothing noises, inching closer to them. White eyes stared back. Her face was scarred, the skin puckered where a dog bite on the cheek had gone untreated.
And it clicked. "Declan," Reid said loudly, and the girl winced and then stood, face clearing as she held her hand out hesitantly, blindly. "It's me, girl. It's Declan's friend."
She blinked. Recognised his voice. And smiled.
"Numair?" she asked, the word clumsy. Stumbled forward. He caught her before she could fall, lifting her up, her hands patting his chest, his face, mouth curved into a laugh. "Numair!" Patted her own chest, the bell clicking against her dirty nails. "Dace. Dace. Declan?"
Emily watched silently as he hugged her close, his heart thumping in his chest at the unexpected gift of this reunion, of the one to come.
"Come on," he murmured, letting her slip down and holding her—Dace, she had a name—hand to lead her into the bright light outside. "Let's go see Declan."
On the way, out he paused. Stepped away from the small group. Stepped away from Dace, who clung to Emily, and her companion who shied away from Reid like he was everything she feared. Clyde was in his fox form, her small hand twined through his thick fur for comfort, and both watched him walk over to the owl.
"Tell him if he needs us, he's always welcome," he murmured, and the owl blinked slowly. Holding out the bell, it took it with one careful talon, studying it intently. Finally, it nodded and flew away. Thank you, Romain, he thought, knowing the man was nearby but not near enough. He wouldn't show himself. He'd made his absolutions.
Moving forward.
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He'd meant to do this earlier. Almost a month after calling London home, he was finally here.
The empty lobby of the group home was brightly decorated with drawings and projects, all tacked to the wall with the kind of matronly care taken only by someone who was immensely proud of every wobbly stick-figure smile and square-box house. The counter was empty, a cheerful sign declaring ring bell for service, please! Reid peered around, feeling odd and out of place in the festivity, eyes drawn almost inexorably to a corkboard littered with newspaper clippings and glossy magazine cut-outs. He stepped closer, footsteps muffled by the carpet but still loud in the empty room, and studied it. It was an eclectic mix of the exploits of whom Reid assumed to be past students of the home, headlines about advances in the Equality for All Act, and with a thrill, one that proclaimed Prentiss Rune Changing Lives. Emily smiled out at him, young and vivid under her graduation cap, and he cocked an eyebrow at the audacity of them choosing to use a picture from so long ago to draw even more attention to the remarkability of the rune.
There were newer clippings, just as carefully pinned, but out of the eye-line of curious children. Reid peered up at them, the sombre pictures that decorated, some strategically placed to hide the photos clipped with them. Exactly where someone drawn by the advances made in the field would stand, to see how far they'd come and how far they still had to go.
…Riots spreading across Israel as Basic Laws Rewritten…
…Peace rallies in Dublin devolved into violence this week as protesters clashed with police…
…Russia says NO to demon equality…
…Australia Divided; 61% of respondents believe demons are a threat to public safety…
"Dr. Reid!" Reid turned, smiling pleasantly when he saw the startled face of the doctor from Israel. "What a surprise! Are you here to see Declan? I'm afraid he's in class, but I'm sure we can arrange for him to be given a pass—"
"Actually," Reid interrupted, slipping his hand into his pocket and glancing back at the board. A Generation Lost: the unseen impact of thrall-bonding children. "I'm here to apply for a job."
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He found Declan sitting with Dace in a rare burst of London sun. The children looked flushed, smiling, happy. Declan sat cross-legged, holding a leafy twig in one hand and trailing it across his thigh. Dace tilted her ear in Reid's direction as he approached, hands slipping gently over the white and red cane across her lap. Their hands were close, Declan's palm up on the grass between them, and she reached out to patter three fingers against his in a rapid, rhythmic pattern. Declan watched her fingers with his mouth pursed in concentration.
"Finger spelling?" Reid asked, and Declan jumped up onto his knees, whirling around. Spilling from his lap, a ball of black fluff hurtled spitting and hissing to a nearby tree, tail fluffed up with indignation. "That's impressive. How did you communicate the patterns to each other without a shared language?"
Declan gaped. Reid smiled. "Yes, it's me, hello," he said, shifting his wings to enjoy the weak sun. "Close your mouth. Hello again, Dace."
Dace ducked her head shyly, braid bobbing forward to thump against her chest.
"Spence?" Declan squeaked, and flung himself into Reid's arms. Reid caught him easily, noting how the boy had grown gangly and heavier in the time since they'd been apart. "You're here! How long are you here!? Can I show you my room? Wait, I have to show you Stormy. Stormy, here puss puss." He clicked his tongue, wriggling out of Reid's arms and dancing a few steps away to look desperately around for, what Reid assumed, was the black fur that had bolted.
"Stormy?" Reid asked mildly, vividly aware of the thick packet of paperwork under his arms. Some related to his employment.
Some, not.
"Fatty's kitten," Declan explained, crouching with his hand rapping the ground invitingly. "He's stupid. Are you staying a while? Is Emily here?"
"Emily's here," Reid said, crouching next to him. "And I don't know. Maybe. Depends… how do you feel about me working here? Research department, of course, so you won't see me all the time but—"
Judging by Declan's shocked shriek, that was a firm yes.
"Here to stay?" he gasped, and Dace edged up next to him, her arms full of black fluff. Reid glanced at her, noting grey-green eyes watching his accusingly from the cradle of her arms, a pink mouth appearing in the black as the kitten protested his confinement. Mnah!
"Here to stay," Reid promised, and found himself enveloped by arms again, a wet cheek pressed against his neck. "I promise. Now, come on. Em's meeting us here on her lunch break. We'll tell you all about it then."
As he walked away, the two children trailing excitedly after him, he could have sworn he heard a chuckle from the kitten trotting by his feet.
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NOV, 2012
Dear Dr. Reid and Mrs. Prentiss.
It's our pleasure to notify you that your application for the adoption of Declan Doyle has been approved and finalized. Congratulations! Please see us as soon as possible to confirm the last few details!
It's been a delight to have Declan with us, but we're all excited to see him moving onto this next stage of his life. He's very lucky to have you.
Best regards, Dr. Arthur Elliot
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"When in doubt, choose to live."
Terry Pratchett, Thief of Time
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AN: So that's it. We say goodbye to the Endlingverse and Magus Prentiss and Declan and everyone else. I've absolutely LOVED writing this and worldbuilding for it, and thank you everyone for sticking with me this far on what turned out to be a far vaster and far more complex story than I ever imagined when I turned to my friend some eleven months ago and said, "hey, what if incubi really existed?"
Thank you everyone 3